Barry Lyndon

Maybe 2.5. This was an intriguing read, but I didn't love it. The main character is very dislikable – which is certainly the point, and his narrative unreliability is quite interestingly explored, but it makes it harder to enjoy the novel. The pacing was also a little off for me.......more

''...Mr. Barry Lyndon is as unprincipled a personage as ever has figured at the head of a history, and as the public will persist in having a moral appended to such tales, we beg here respectfully to declare that we take the moral of the story of Barry Lyndon, Esquire, to be, - that worldly success......more

Turns out Becky Sharp makes a pretty awful dude. The adventurer is a stock villain in Victorian literature. With no money but plenty of charm, he or she tries to marry into comfort, sometimes with the help of one dastardly plot or another. Sir Felix Carbury of Trollope's The Way We Live Now is a good......more